Category: Travel Industry

Seattle’s legendary Space Needle is currently undergoing a multi-million dollar makeover. Most of the changes to the Emerald City’s top tourist draw involve installing glass panels so guests can get an even clearer view of the surrounding city and mountains. These renovations are will cost $100 million and are expected to be finished by the end of 2018.

Visitors in the Space Needle’s observation deck will notice that construction crews replaced all the former walls with glass panels. For the more adventurous tourists, the Space Needle now has glass “Skyriser” benches guests can sit or lean on to feel as if they’re flying over Seattle.

Crews are now hard at work building a spiral staircase to connect the Space Needle’s two observation decks. As you might’ve already guessed, this staircase will have glass all around it so tourists can look out on Seattle as they walk up and down the observation towers. This new staircase, called Oculus, will hopefully be completed for the busy summer travel season.

Besides the observation decks, the Space Needle’s celebrated SkyCity restaurant is also getting a makeover. Not only will the panels in this restaurant be made of glass, the tables and floor will be glass as well. Experts expect this restaurant to be ready to open at the end of 2018.

Crews are also building a new restaurant called The Loupe and a café/wine bar called Atmos. Both of these eateries are set to open by the end of 2018.

Completed in 1962 for the World’s Fair, Seattle’s steel Space Needle measures 605-feet and still holds the title for the fourth tallest observation tower in the USA. The main observation deck is located at the 520-feet mark and the SkyCity Restaurant is 500 feet above the ground.

As of today, about 80 percent of the Space Needle’s renovations are completed. Interested tourists can learn more about this project’s progress on the Space Needle’s website: https://www.spaceneedle.com/home/.

According to the head of the travel industry’s umbrella group, President Donald Trump’s trade war with China may affect international travel as it could restrict travel between certain countries. These restrictions may lead to a sharp decrease in world travel and business trips to the United States.

Roger Dow, president of the travel umbrella group called U.S. Travel Association, believes that Trump’s trade policies and talk causing the $2.1 trillion industry to go into a nose dive. This current industry started in 2015 with a strong dollar that made world travel expensive, many countries had slumping economies and the new trend of European discount airlines that made international travel cheaper to do.

The travel umbrella group president thinks that America’s part of international travel has gone down to 11.9 percent from 13.6 percent. Dow mentioned this during a Bloomberg interview. This decrease in US travel is equal to $32 billion, 7.4 million visitors and 100,000 jobs.

Dow believes that the Trump administration is just not getting it. The person on the street does not seem to know that world travel is a job creator.

The travel industry is very anxious about this trade war. China could have a larger travel market than the US in a couple of years. This trade war could affect travel between the two countries.

From the travel industry’s point of view, this trade war is hopefully a short one so travel between China and US can get back to normal.